A Wave or a Hello?

Some photographs need time before I can see what they have to offer. Others only come into focus for me once the editing is done. This one left me wondering about a small but irresistible detail: is Tomás waving at someone, or greeting them?

I’m not naturally outgoing. When I was younger, a couple of drinks made it easier to stop second-guessing myself around other people. These days, I sometimes bury myself in my phone to avoid a conversation before it has even begun. I’m just as uneasy with goodbyes. I have this persistent feeling that someone leaving might be walking away moments before something wonderful was about to happen.

Tomás looks intent on what he’s doing, yet there’s a smile I can almost read in the reflection on the bay, even though most of his face is hidden. Maybe he’s smiling at someone in a motorboat. Maybe he’s just spotted a friend. Or perhaps he knows the bay so well that greeting it comes as naturally as greeting an old friend. I like the contradiction: he seems both utterly focused and quietly amused. I rarely manage to be both at once.

The trick itself is familiar in skateboarding. Its technical difficulty isn’t what draws me in. I’m interested in the moment a photograph stops being evidence of an event and starts giving rise to possibilities. I can imagine one story, abandon it, and invent another. Tomás has his own version of what happened. I have mine. For a brief moment, they coexist in the same frame.

And then there’s the boat. One little boat passes, another follows. The bay is almost perfectly still, as if it were waiting for something, too. To me, that looks like peace.